St Mary-at-Lambeth Burials
The parish records began noting burials in the 1530s and since then over 26,000 people were interred in the church, graveyard and adjacent burial ground in Lambeth High Street. Burials ceased in the 1850s due to lack of space. Below are some of the notable and less well known parishioners buried here.
Left: St Marys in 1836, hand-coloured lithograph by W.H. Miller
'Captain
Bligh of The Bounty'
William Bligh: Born near Plymouth in Devon 9th September 1754. A distinguished sailor in His Majesty's Navy, Bligh was in command of HMS Bounty in 1787, bound for the West Indies from the South Seas, to transport breadfruit plants as food for the slaves of the plantations. Cast adrift following a mutiny on board, Bligh navigated the 23' long open boat, containing 19 people, on a 41 day, 6,700km journey back to safety at Timor in the Dutch East Indies.
Above left to right: Bligh transplanting breadfruit from Tahiti, engraving by T. Gosse 1796; Breadfruit (Artocarpus incisus); Bligh being received by the Governor of Timor, by Benezach 1802.
In 1805 he was appointed Governor of New South Wales. He died, a Vice-Admiral of the Blue, in 1817, and buried here with his wife, day-old twin sons and a grandson. The tomb is made of Coade stone, a durable artificial stone locally manufactured on a site near Westminster Bridge.
Above left: The Coade stone tomb of William Bligh. Above right: Bligh's home in Lambeth Road.
The Tradescant Family
Left to right: John Tradescant the Elder (1570-1638), Hester Tradescant (d.1678), John Tradescant the Younger (1608-62) and John (grandson)
Five members of the Tradescant family are buried here: John the Elder; John the Younger with his two wives Jane and Hester, and his son, also called John, who died aged 19. The original 17th century design for the tomb is in the Pepys Library, Oxford. The present tomb is the third on the site of the Tradescant grave and replicates the original design. It was made by White of Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1853 with stone from Darnley Dale in Yorkshire. The epitaph on the top of the tomb was written by Tradescant's friend, John Aubrey. The four sides of the tomb are carved: On the east side - the Tradescant Arms On the west side - a seven-headed Hydra and a skull. On the south side - broken columns, Corinthian capitals, a pyramid and ruins On the north side - a crocodile, shells, and a view of some Egyptian buildings. Local Lambeth legend states that if the tomb is danced around twelve times as Big Ben strikes midnight a ghost appears.
Above: The Tradescant tomb and epitaph
Elias Ashmole (1617 - 1692) helped John Tradescant the Younger to catalogue his father's collection (to which he had added extensively). The Musaeum Tradescantianum was published in 1656. After the death of John Tradescant the Younger, and with the Tradescant collection at its heart, Ashmole founded the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It was housed in a building designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Now the Museum of the History of Science, it still stands, next to the Sheldonian Theatre.
Left to right: Elias Ashmole (courtesy Ashmolean Museum), Ashmole's tomb in the Leigh Chapel (no longer on view), Ashmolean Museum c.1685 by Michael Burger.
The Sealy Family: One of the most interesting tombs in the graveyard is the Sealy Tomb. This is a Coade stone tomb of fine quality made in 1808 by Sealy and Coade. John Sealy (d. 1813) was a cousin of Eleanor Coade and was made a partner in the factory c.1798. This factory in Lambeth invented a high quality, durable artificial stone made from a 'secret' mixture of materials (sand, clay, flint, ground up fired clay, glass) that shrank very little in the firing process and thus allowed accurate reproduction of detail.
The Museum has several other Coade stone memorials as well as the 'Charity Boy' ordered from the factory in 1785 and placed over the entrance of the Parachocial Charity School for Boys on Lambeth Green. It was presented to the Museum by the Old Boys' Association of Archbishop Temple's School in memory of the old boys and staff who gave their lives in the two World Wars.
Left to right: Sealy tomb; the Coade stone factory at Kings Arms Stairs (courtesy of Prudence Scrivener); Detail of the 'Charity Boy'.
James
Sowerby (1757-1822) was a botanical artist, engraver and botanist
who produced drawings for William Curtis's The Botanical Magazine and
Flora Londonensis. Between 1790 and 1814 he also produced over
2,500 plates for English Botany with text by Sir James Smith. Later
he engraved most the illustrations for Flora Graeca by John Sibthorp.
His son James de Carle Sowerby was born in Lambeth and also became an
artist and naturalist of note. The family lived in Mead Place where they
established a small natural history museum. Sowerby was buried in the
burial ground, but the site of the grave is now unknown.
Left: The only known self-portrait of James Sowerby (seated) with his brother Charles and their sister Arabella.
Below: Botanical drawings by James Sowerby c.1790
John
Miller (Johann Sebastian Müller) (1715-1792) was a botanical
artist and engraver who was born in Nürenburg and came to London
in 1744. He produced illustrations for Philip Miller's Figures of Plants
and was patronised by Dr John Fothergill, producing his most famous work
Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei 1770-77. The original drawings
were purchased by Catherine the Great upon the death of Dr Fothergill
and are now in the Komarov Botanic Library, St Petersburg. In his latter
years he lived and worked at 10 Vauxhall Walk and was buried here on 24th
June 1792. His son, John Frederick Miller, was also a skilled draughtsman,
drawing plants and artefacts for Sir Joseph Banks and Captain Cook.
Left: John Miller
Below: Hand-coloured botanical engravings by Miller from Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei
Peter
Dollond (1730 - 1820) was a celebrated optician who was in
business with his father John at their premises in St. Paul's Churchyard.
He invented the achromatic telescope, designed many astronomical and navigational
devices and made bifocals glasses in 1781. He was optician to King George
III and is buried in St Mary's burial ground, with a marble memorial in
the north aisle. The high street optician Dollond and Aitchison bears
his name.
Below: Silver five-drawer monocular made by Dollond. Right; Peter Dollond
Ann
Selina ('Nancy') Storace (1765 - 1817) A noted soprano with
an Italian father and English mother, who made her debut aged 7 years
in Southampton and by 13 was singing at opera houses in Italy. She was
the first Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro singing arias written
especially for her by her friend Wolfgang Mozart. Nancy returned to
London with her brother, the composer Stephen Storace, and continued
her career until retiring in 1808. She lived in Herne Hill and died
aged 51 - her mother erected a memorial tablet in St Mary's which includes
the following lines Ah! What avails that muscik tun'd thy throat;
And crowds enraptur'd hung on ev'ry note.
Jeanne
de Saint-Remy de Valois, Countess de la Motte (1756 - 1791), was infamous
for her involvement in the 'Affair of the Diamond Necklace', the scandal
which contributed to the downfall of the French monarchy - Napoleon once
remarked, 'The Queen's death must be dated from the Diamond Necklace Trial'.
Jeanne de la Motte, imprisoned after her trial, escaped from the Bastille
and fled to London, where she published her memoirs, adding to the revolutionary
fervour in France. In June 1791, to escape bailiffs (although she assumed
they were the agents of the Duke of Orleans) she climbed out of a third
floor window at her Lambeth lodgings and fell into the street below. The
countess died two months later from her injuries and was buried in the
churchyard of St. Mary's.
Left : The diamond necklace was commissioned by Louis XV for Madame Dubarry from the crown jewellers Bohmer and Bassenge. It was worth an equivalent value then of £80,000, but with the death of the King the necklace was not paid for, almost bankrupting the jewellers and leading to various unsuccessful schemes to secure a sale to Queen Marie-Antoinette.